I'm torn between 'too grindy' and 'not my thing'. I finally got time to play it today and by joining groups and then darting off to do my own objectives when we got close I was able to finish the introductory quests, a few dailies and by following the groups I killed a bunch of bosses and did 2 skirmishes.

It was ok and I felt like I'd gotten a lot done, then I looked through the achievements to see what I hadn't done and it was basically "now do all the same things again, and again, and again" to get points of various types (faction loyalty, kill/quest counts for achievements, drops for collections etc.) and at that point I was bored with the whole idea. Nothing about it interests me enough that I want to do it as much as ZOS requires me to, so I think I'm going to call it done and go back to stuff I actually want to play.

I visited it today for the first time to give it a try, saw nobody was in the zone at all. Checked group finder, saw a lot of groups with names that I presume are for super specific quests or dungeons, none of which I have, joined one for a nearby boss, got kicked out of the night market and was forced to run back to the boss I was already at solo, got murdered instantly by a stray pack and gave up.

Adventure zones don't work, ZOS found this out the hard way with Craglorn at launch. Hopefully they learn their lesson this time.

It's organised mayhem - it might be the best thing ZOS have ever done.

AvalonRanger wrote: »

Despite of much of problem, there're one good aspect in the Night Market as game design.

Fake role will not work in this new group focused contents. Good-bye fake role cheaters.

This is objectively not true. We couldn't find a tank or another healer for the pug group I was in so I slotted a taunt and a shield on my healer and off we went.
I'm a relatively mid tier player, and the pugs I was with weren't amazing by any means, but we muddled through and probably 3 dds is actually easier than 2 since so many of the mechanics boil down to "kill stuff faster"

Afer playing a little more i'm loving it. I've completed the trial 2 times and got the akivement for oddities and races.
It was fun.

What I liked

• Zerg + fast rotation farm works well, tempo is good
• 12-man PUG coordination is smooth and enjoyable
• Trial design is solid: not hard mechanically, but requires real coordination, which makes it fun

What I didn’t like

• Reward structure is weak: mostly motif junk and outdated gear
• Very fast burnout: most content done in 3–4 days, no long-term incentive
• Event duration vs rewards mismatch, too long for too little payoff
• Key loop is unrewarding: keys reset, no drop, cosmetic or reward. No reason to repeat!
• Trial has no replay value after helmet + achievements
• Alt advantage: more alts = more coffers = higher fragment chance

Instance conflict (not big deal):

• While waiting for Skirmish you rotate Brazen and Argent, but if others kill them it can desync the flow and break your farm rhythm, sometimes leaving you idle until Skirmish.
• More players = more activity, but also more disruption and downtime

Overall
Strong core loop and coordination, especially in Trial and organized zerg farming. But progression, rewards, and replayability fall off too fast. As a active player, I was basically done by day 3, and there’s no real reason to keep grinding in a 50-day event.

Not my thing overall (Solo Player)

I expected this to be quite different -- a public dungeon at a higher difficulty. Therefore, I expected it to be packed to the brim the first few weeks, to the point that you need to stack on top of 50 other people just to speak to a quest NPC. This did not appeal to me, so what I expected was that I would wait until the hype died down for a bit, then go in to quietly get my quests done and soft-group with a few other late starters to do the bosses and such.

I did not think I would be disappointed to find that a zone is NOT packed to the brim (as someone who likes to explore and quest in areas when they are less busy) but this has been the case. From what I understand, soft-grouping is very difficult and you are required to join actual groups to get the content done.

I am not opposed to grouping. I quite regularly join groups for dungeons and trials, and can tolerate reasonably well or even enjoy the experience, depending on who is in the group with me. But this is short-form content. The Night Market is a large area, and completing everything would realistically require joining a continuous string of groups. Could I do it? Yes, of course. Would I enjoy it? Absolutely not.

I have therefore accepted that this content is simply not aimed at me, and while a bit of a shame personally, that is fine. Not everything can be for everyone.

Maybe I will jump in before it closes up shop for the season to stealth through the quests and collect the lorebooks. I would try the puzzles too, but I guess those aren't soloable?

I normally don't love harder content, but I absolutely love Night Market. It's decent enough that I'm actually grinding it on both NA and EU.

I play as a solo player, but if I need to do one of the bosses or a skirmish, I just look in group finder, this early in the event there are tons of groups. If I don't see one for what I need, I just create one, they fill fairly quickly.

The best part about this event, is you get the free house just for walking around the start area and doing the initial quest.
If you want more rewards, you need to actually put in the effort to earn it. Spend time to make sure you tweak your toon, add some health/armor, add some healing/shields, learn how to move out the way of the damage. .

Interestingly enough, I've even seen people using thief builds to run in and do some of the easy 'non kill' quest.
So I might try that on an alt toon just to get more dailies done if I feel like it.

I'm honestly surprised at how much I've been enjoying the area and have spent a decent amount of time trying to get guildies to not be so afraid of going in and just joining a group to grind bosses.

So I'm perfectly happy with the current difficulty of the event. We'll see how things look closer to the end of the event, but it's fine right now.

I love it in a group!
ZOS put a lot of work into the NPCS, zone design, lots of cool stuff to see!

But

It definitely falls outside of the marketing mantra "play how you want" for many solo players.
I know there is already other content in game that also limits solo players, trials, some newer or progress-locked dungeons, etc.

But this being a limited time "event" it's odd to me that they did not make it so all players can participate equally.
I'm fortunate to have awesome guildies I can run it with but for those that can't, they kind get left out which is sad.

Solo, you can put together a good stealth build with sets and do the dailies that don't involve killing things.
But most of the boss fights you will need a solid coordinated group, trial-level group recommended.

They could do well to space the groups of trash further apart also.
Soloing ONE group of trash can be doable, but in many places they are spaced so closely to other mobs you end up pulling way more than is manageable running solo.

Other minor concern is the the rewards from the non-gold boxes being very underwhelming.
However the lead drop rate has been great and the gold box rewards are decent.

Solid content overall, I just think it could benefit from a little optimization and a more solo-friendly touch.

It's disappointing that 90 percent of it is, once again, (like IA) re-used assets from dungeons. How many times do we have to suffer through the march of sacrifices trap phase? Gold health bars are tired.

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

boy oh boy this weekend has been fun working on last gilded for 2nd trial run , awards aint great but not one that really cares too ,

i would like to see them do more with the key system having to get them each and every time you want to do an activity get to be to much of a grind , if they would add in MASTER KEYS that you get at end of trial
1st master key for argents ( no longer needing to do 6 argents to fight gildeds)
2nd master key is for gildeds making it so you can do trial freely as well as argents, gildeds , making the NM fully opened o do the things you fine most enjoyable or get side achievements without feeling the pressure of grinding keys to re-run it

I think these master keys are a bad idea.
Within a couple of days nobody would run anymore the brazen and argents, which is a disaster for accumulating favor and which who leave players who would jump in later in the Night Market in the cold.

Danikat wrote: »

...... or they're not inventory items and are buried in a menu I haven't found.

This. Press F5 and hover the mouse over the guys at the bottom, this will show the keys.

Eliahnus wrote: »

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

boy oh boy this weekend has been fun working on last gilded for 2nd trial run , awards aint great but not one that really cares too ,

i would like to see them do more with the key system having to get them each and every time you want to do an activity get to be to much of a grind , if they would add in MASTER KEYS that you get at end of trial
1st master key for argents ( no longer needing to do 6 argents to fight gildeds)
2nd master key is for gildeds making it so you can do trial freely as well as argents, gildeds , making the NM fully opened o do the things you fine most enjoyable or get side achievements without feeling the pressure of grinding keys to re-run it

I think these master keys are a bad idea.
Within a couple of days nobody would run anymore the brazen and argents, which is a disaster for accumulating favor and which who leave players who would jump in later in the Night Market in the cold.

i think it give the higher level players a chance to hop around and help them that are in need better because as it is if someone needs help in timeless wallows you 1st have to kill two argents to get there to help out .. or if trial needs help you have to do 6 argents 3 gildeds to help out someone else , having everything un locked doesnt mean things wont be done just means we have more freedom to help out others , like lastnight i had done gossamer crypt with one group moved on to timeless wallow and after doing it the tank only new member in the group needed gossamers crypt all 3 of us wanted to help them but couldnt because we'd just done it and had no key to get in this being my 2nd time around with master keys i could of then done it and had another player ready to go do trial , and being they was a great tank i 100% would have taken the time to help them move on

Not fun solo and when you group it's OK but gets super boring fast.

Finally had some time to sit down and try the Night Market a little more extensively. I think it's pretty good really, umm the regular dungeon runs have been getting kind of stale, and this gives me the opportunity to really let my Tanking builds shine. I've prepared for things that seem to occur often in the Night Market vs a quieter nights running Normals or "Vormals' lol.

So yeah, from that angle its pretty good. Not everyone will be able to relate to this however hah. But you really need a group, you need a good strong tank with experience from dealing with some of this content. I've seen disorganized masses fighting bosses like 'Ozzy' without a Tank and its brutal but also very entertaining to watch them struggle. >:D Yeah, I know but that's what it's going to be like if you send in groups without a Tank that knows what they're doing and no organization. It's ok to die the first couple times as long as you've gained enough ground and are learning the fights, but there's a difference too between getting the boss down to 5/10% health and dying vs trying to Tank and not even lasting past the first 10% health.

In short, Night Market can be a cool place, there's lots to do, got all my mythic leads, but highly recommend groups be organized. It doesn't necessarily need to be Trials quality, but a few good troopers need to know what's going and make the right decisions for the group to follow. Good communication, reasonable goals and reliable accountable governance.